ChaCha Chili

The Food: Think of it as a brick-and-mortar version of one of the many Mexican-Korean fusion trucks wandering the streets of L.A.

How Much: About $15 per person. MC, V.

Beverages: Soft drinks and beer.

Reservations: Not necessary.

ChaCha Chili is about as guilty a guilty pleasure as I can imagine. It’s essentially a Korean-Mexican Fusion food truck that’s landed on one of the busiest Chinese restaurant strips in America, with options for noodles, Shanghai dumplings, hot pots, Szechuan fire and more available in every direction.

But ChaCha sits as a beacon of contrariness, a citadel of difference, right in the middle of it all.

There’s a message on the website acknowledging the food truck overlap, and throwing down the gauntlet in the process. It reads: “We do Asian Fusion (Korean Tacos, Korean Angus Burgers, etc). A lot of people like to compare us with the Kogi Truck, but read the reviews; most tend to think we are better. (Sorry, Kogi.)”

Well, ChaCha is certainly easier to deal with. You walk in, you place your order, you find a table, you eat sitting down. I’ll say that again: you eat sitting down. I’ve been to a lot of food trucks around L.A. I don’t love eating a kimchee burrito standing up; the burrito always drips onto my shirt and pants (and trust me, Tide is no match when it comes to Mexican-Korean Fusion juices).

The thing about ChaCha is that — how to put this? — it’s a wacked out, crazy, loony culinary experience. It’s sort of the Farrell’s Ice Cream chain, but with tacos and burritos, rather than troughs of ice cream, chocolate syrup and cherries. The folks working at ChaCha are so ... happy. They greet you when you walk in, they yell at each other, they smile all the time — and not Moonie-style fake smiles. These kids are really having a ball, and it’s infectious — a happy staff makes for a happy restaurant. Even if the food at ChaCha was less good than it is, this would be a happy way to spend an evening.

It’s funny how well Korean and Mexican go together. They’re two wholly disparate cuisines that seem to have been fated to meet somewhere. This is a marriage that was meant to be here in Los Angeles. Korean spices and grilling techniques go very well with Mexican wrappers; bulgogi and tortillas are snug as could be. Even the sauces mix well; Sriracha and Tapatio, together at last.

The menu is, if not actually fast food, at least fast-ish food. Or maybe good food served fast. Nothing takes long to emerge from the kitchen, hardly giving you a chance to nibble on your chips and salsa. The appetizers are a good place to start. Indeed, order enough, and you may not get any further. The mushroom poppers are medium-sized, chunky mushrooms filled with some sort of crab mix, battered and deepfried. This is not health food — not even close, qwhich pretty well defines guilty pleasures.

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If you want to up the ante on the poppers, go for the Jalapeno Bomb, with the same crab mix stuffed inside whole jalapenos, which are deepfried and topped with hot sauce. (My daughter got as far as sniffing our order and declared it way too hot for her.)

Actually, the essence of the food at ChaCha is taking a dish to the edge... and then pushing it over. As in the case of the ChaCha fries, which are layered with cheese and chorizo, beans and salsa, jalapenos and sour cream. There are French fries under there somewhere, but you’ve got to excavate.

Even the salads are an exercise in glorious excess. The greens are tossed with tortilla chips, avocado, mandarin orange slices and either chicken, tofu or just vegetables. The Korean angus burger is a pile on a bun — half a pound of beef in a spicy marinade, with grilled onions, various greens, tomato, cheese, ketchup and a Sriracha mayo. There’s a chorizo angus burger that’s even spicier. And there’s a Korean Philly cheese steak that would mystify the purists in Philadelphia. (But then, they use Cheez Wiz at some Philly joints so what do they know?)

By comparison, the tacos, burritos, quesadillas and chimichangas are mild creations, filled variously with chicken, bulgogi beef, short rib kalbi, spicy pork, battered fish or tofu. I especially like the quesadillas, because the jack and cheddar cheeses are mixed with kimchee and spicy mayo. A bonus is that they don’t drip all over the place.

There are bowls, too, one set made with rice and one with glassy japchae noodles. The noodle bowls actually approach healthy because they’re made with broccoli. And hey, there are a bunch of artisan beers on the menu to wash it all down. You know, beer is healthy because it’s made of grain. It’s a pleasure, without any guilt at all.